Re: [OT] HRMs (was Re: Has the google system been beaten?)

[Paul Makepeace]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:52:51PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>   http://daveb.net/training/
>   http://daveb.net/s710/

This is definitely some cool sh.t -- his spelunk of the mapsource
file format is well worth a read.

>   http://www.heartratemonitor.co.uk/polar_m62.html

Man, technology's come on since my day :)

> Noone at my gym seems to use a HRM except for me. Weird. I'm reading a

It takes a few months to really grok the depths of fitness ignorance in
the English general public and even amongst professionals :-( I wonder
if it's different in .au?

Put it this way, I took a gym course recently and of the 14 attendees in
my class (i.e. people who were training to be fitness professionals)
only one other person had any idea of watching heart rate. There weren't
any serious distance (run, cycle, swim, ski, skate, etc) athletes but
still, you'd think people would at least know about it.

Oh well, it's to your advantage if you decide to compete; you'll get
done in a third of the time what the rest of the finger-in-the-wind
guesstimators will manage.

**

Geeks have the capacity to become serious athletes. Their ability to
absorb, process, and use chunks of information at wide ranges of
abstraction can be put to really effective, creative use in sports. Many
of the top bodybuilders are educated to Masters & PhD level. So much for
stereotypes.

Exercise improves mental function too. Film at 11.

> book on HRMs (sad I know) and am getting the impression that it's
> extremely difficult to train really properly without one.

Yep, HRMs are miracle devices when it comes to keeping in/out of
aerobic/anaerobic work, and crucially knowing what days to rest -- this,
and preventing overdoing it in a session, are its killer apps IMO.

I'm pretty crap at long distance work being a sprinter. Yet one time in
a moment of insanity I decided to ride from Cambridge to Huddersfield
(270km?) with absolutely no distance training at all. I programmed in an
upper limit of about 140bpm (hey, I was young) and set off. I managed it
more or less continously with a 1hr's break in Leics. There's no way on
earth I would've kept my sprinting tendencies under control, and thus
wussed onto a train, without it.

HRMs rule.

> Hardly ever looked at ebay, so I didn't know it had product reviews.
> Will check it out.

I dunno about reviews but certainly plenty of 2nd hand cast-offs. There
was a 2nd hand Polar trainer on sale at Southbank gym, if you're in the
area.

,
Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

"What is so damn hard about asking for directions? Fast, then expel
 worms."
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/

Re: Orange

[Earle Martin]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 11:22:54PM +0100, will wrote:
> http://www.dazedsheep.co.uk/

Redirects to http://www.dazedsheep.co.uk/james/, which gives a Directory
Listing Denied error.



-- 
# Earle Martin http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EarleMartin
$a="f695a9a2176a7dd1618af6649896ee10f05ea986de18af6277e9a1d8ef4696644569a1d".
"8ef46961ae1e64277e9896eea7d92ea8003e9a1d8ef4696f6950";$b="8ALB6AIA4.BA2";$c=
join"",unpack"C*",$b;$c=~s/7/2/g;@b=split"",$c;foreach$d(@b){$e=hex(substr($a
,$f,$d));while(length($e)<8){substr($e,0,0)=0;}print pack"b8",$e;$f+=$d;}

Re: Messing with mail-owned files from Apache

[Steve Keay]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:31:36PM +0100, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> I'd like to do things like create, read, and delete files in /var/mail
> owned by mail:mail. It'll (ideally) be called from within a perl module
> running under mod_perl.

Security is an emotional topic for some - I lay down and prepare to be
flambeed.

You have (at least) two options.  Both suck:

1) Run the whole application (in the mod_perl case, that means apache)
   as the user who owns the files.  That means that if anyone cracks
   apache they can read/write/delete all the mail with no effort.

   If your whole application is using those files (say, like a webmail
   server) then this may be a reasonable thing to do.  It is fast and
   simple.  Your maintainers and your SAs might like this.

2) Create a "helper" process that runs as the owner of the files.
   This could be an suid process that you exec() each time you need
   it, or it could be a daemon that you connect to using sockets or
   whatever.
   
   Suexec is an example of this - as has already been mentioned it
   might not do what you want out of the box, for instance the "mail"
   user normally has $uid < 100 which would not be allowed by the
   stock suexec.

   Another example of this approach is accessing the mailboxes via
   IMAP.  The IMAP server would require authentication, but this could
   be "passed through" from the client so you don't have to store it
   anywhere for long.

   If accessing these files is a small part of a larger application
   then perhaps this way is better - someone who cracks the
   application and does `rm -rf /` won't delete the mail files.  They
   can still access the mail if they try, but are unlikely to do it by
   accident.  It also means that other files used by the application
   can be owned by other users/groups which might be a good thing.

   It is more complicated than (1), and that could easily lead to
   worse security that the simple solution if you're not careful.

I think best practice mostly involves having lots of boxes with
firewalls between each one.  Or using databases, which naturally
bypass all these questions, because their security model is, well,
different[0].

Or just be very carefull with the way you code your application (*all*
of it), take very good backups and don't worry about the rest.

[0] exactly the same as running everything as a single user on every
individual machine?

Re: Orange

[will]

On Sun, 2003-07-13 at 15:32, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Sunday, July 13, 2003 2:56 pm +0100 Leo Lapworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Well, what with it being YAPC::EU in a couple of weeks, and Mr Greggy
> > will be running the auction I personally feel that it should be
> > reauctioned - I'm quite happy to impliment more than just a colour
> > change - Hmm.. little sheep (http://www.cuckoo.org/features/sheep/)
> > all over the site - I'd put some cash forward for that...
> 
> 

http://www.dazedsheep.co.uk/

[OT] HRMs (was Re: Has the google system been beaten?)

[Adam Spiers]

My prediction was correct that you might be the first respondent on a
health & fitness thread ;-)

Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:10:22PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> > [0] Incidentally if anyone has thoughts on the Suunto X6HR or other
> > high end HRMs (Polar 820/720, HAC4 etc. etc.) I'd be interested to
> > hear them.
> 
> Polar was first to market with HRMs years ago and at the time could
> enjoy gouging consumers. Now that other manufacturers have jumped in you
> can get essentially the same functionality for a lot less, e.g. Vetta do
> a nice HRM & speedo combined.

Actually I already have a Vetta :-)  Well, not the HRM model, but a
nice V100.  I also have a Polar M52.  What I'm really after though, is
the ability to plot graphs/histograms etc. involving various pairs of
the following variables: time, distance, speed, heart rate, gradient,
altitude.  For example, see

  http://daveb.net/training/
  http://daveb.net/s710/
  http://hac4linux.sourceforge.net/

> Polar also used to, maybe don't any more,
> create sealed chest straps where you can't change the batteries
> (fsckers).

They still do for most of their products, but finally in the last few
months (I think) have changed their evil ways:

  http://www.heartratemonitor.co.uk/polar_m62.html

> Definitely check ebay or your local gym board -- plenty of bored
> ex-users :)

Noone at my gym seems to use a HRM except for me.  Weird.  I'm reading
a book on HRMs (sad I know) and am getting the impression that it's
extremely difficult to train really properly without one.

Hardly ever looked at ebay, so I didn't know it had product reviews.
Will check it out.

Thanks,

Adam

Re: Has the google system been beaten?

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 22:10, Adam Spiers wrote:
> These pages all supposedly contained both search words, but upon
> visiting, contained neither.  It seems that someone has registered an
> enormous number of domains, and has somehow conned google into
> thinking all these pages are relevant to many searches which they are
> not.  Running a WHOIS query on any of these domains yields:
> 
> [Querying whois.internic.net]
> [Redirected to whois.parava.net]
> [Querying whois.parava.net]
> [whois.parava.net]
> 
> Can anyone explain?

Yup.

$ host www.direct-tank-bags.com
www.direct-tank-bags.comA   64.37.123.52
$ whois -L 64.37.123.52
Warning: RIPE flags ignored for a traditional server.
CYBERCON, INC. CYBERCON-BLK-3 (NET-64-37-64-0-1)
  64.37.64.0 - 64.37.127.255
Best Position Corporation CBCN-BPC-64-37-123-0 (NET-64-37-123-0-1)
  64.37.123.0 - 64.37.123.255

Oo, 'Best Position Corp'. Since this is getting archived, I'd best
associated terms such as 'slimey profit-seeking spam-monging rotters' or
some such. They're an SEO.

Basically, it appears they're trying to hide their tracks by asking
Deepbot not to cache their pages, probably because they are sending spam
data to the Google DCs but 'commercial information' to everyone else.
I'm kind of surprised that they are that high in the search, and since
www2 and www3 bring back identical results it doesn't look like Google
is dancing. Therefore, it must just be spam.

You can complain to Google, but I'm not sure I'd bother - they will get
picked up in the next dance most likely; blatent T&Cs breach. 

Has Google been beaten? Dunno. To get that high a rating you would
either need uncommon terms (like yours), or lots of in-bound links. They
don't have the in-bound key terms, so it's basically due to the lack of
results. Sadly, in niches, I think Google could easily get beaten. They
don't fight battles, only wars.

Cheers,

Alex.

Re: Messing with mail-owned files from Apache

[the hatter]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Paul Makepeace wrote:

> Is there a best practice when performing operations as a system user
> from with perl in Apache? It seems suexec is quite restricted in what it
> can do, specifically it won't setuid to system users nor operate outside
> of a particular directory hierarchy.

Both of these are tweakable when you compile apache though.  If you'd
rather not let system users other than mail be suexec'd to, then the
source to suexec is very simple.  Obviously the provided warnings should
be taken seriously that altering it may be a Very Bad Thing unless you
understand what you're doing - but it is a trivial change.  The
directories that suexec cares about are the ones where the actual binaries
are located, so unless your apache is chrooted so it can't find your mail
spool or whatever, then the directory location bits probably won't even
need tweaking.


the hatter

Messing with mail-owned files from Apache

[Paul Makepeace]

I'd like to do things like create, read, and delete files in /var/mail
owned by mail:mail. It'll (ideally) be called from within a perl module
running under mod_perl.

Is there a best practice when performing operations as a system user
from with perl in Apache? It seems suexec is quite restricted in what it
can do, specifically it won't setuid to system users nor operate outside
of a particular directory hierarchy. suidperl is apparently heavily
deprecated (http://packages.debian.org/testing/perl/perl-suid.html).
What's left?

Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

"What is forests and savannahs? My mind is no longer functioning."
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/

Re: Has the google system been beaten?

[Paul Makepeace]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:10:22PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> [0] Incidentally if anyone has thoughts on the Suunto X6HR or other
> high end HRMs (Polar 820/720, HAC4 etc. etc.) I'd be interested to
> hear them.

Polar was first to market with HRMs years ago and at the time could
enjoy gouging consumers. Now that other manufacturers have jumped in you
can get essentially the same functionality for a lot less, e.g. Vetta do
a nice HRM & speedo combined. Polar also used to, maybe don't any more,
create sealed chest straps where you can't change the batteries
(fsckers).

Definitely check ebay or your local gym board -- plenty of bored
ex-users :)

Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

"If I lit my pants on fire, then you will never know."
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/

Has the google system been beaten?

[Adam Spiers]

I'm on the verge of buying a fancy new heart rate monitor watch which
lets you download recorded exercise sessions to your computer.
Amongst various googling search terms, I tried the search terms
"linux" and "x6hr" together[0]:

  http://www.google.com/search?q=linux+x6hr&btnG=Google+Search

Imagine my surprise when, below the links for the geek.com review,
came a whole load of utterly irrelevant links to formulaic URLs such
as

  http://www.toys-toddler-activity.com/tempurpedic_lopez.html

These pages all supposedly contained both search words, but upon
visiting, contained neither.  It seems that someone has registered an
enormous number of domains, and has somehow conned google into
thinking all these pages are relevant to many searches which they are
not.  Running a WHOIS query on any of these domains yields:

[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.parava.net]
[Querying whois.parava.net]
[whois.parava.net]

Can anyone explain?

Adam


[0] Incidentally if anyone has thoughts on the Suunto X6HR or other
high end HRMs (Polar 820/720, HAC4 etc. etc.) I'd be interested to
hear them.

Re: Treating strings like file handles?

[Dominic Mitchell]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:16:01 +0100, Chris Andrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 08:57:20PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
>> 
>> Because you were blinded by the orange?
>> 
>> http://search.cpan.org/orange.html
> 
> Behold, interweb sunglasses:
> 
>   ExtFilterDefine orangenomore mode=output intype=text/css \
>   cmd="/bin/sed s/ff7300/006699/g"
> 
>   ProxyRequests On
>  
> SetOutputFilter orangenomore
> ...
>  
> 
> Bwahahaha!

Cool, but worth pointing out that it requires Apache 2.0 or better.

Does mod_perl 2 let you do this kind of stuff?  I haven't checked...

-Dom

-- 
| Semantico: creators of major online resources  |
|   URL: http://www.semantico.com/   |
|   Tel: +44 (1273) 72   |
|   Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[Dominic Mitchell]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:40:15 -0400, darren chamberlain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> * Darren Chamberlain  [2003-07-15 11:34]:
>> * Dave Cross  [2003-07-15 08:37]:
>> > So what we're looking for is an application that can sit between the
>> > VB app and the Oracle database, translating the ODBC/SQL Server calls
>> > to Oracle API calls. It needs to look like an SQL Server to the VB app
>> > and then actually put the data into Oracle.
>> 
>> It might be interesting to write a small ODBC listener that can respond
>> to ODBC calls and Do Stuff with the strings that come in.
> 
> Er, I just realized that was only half of a thought.  The rest looks
> something like:
> 
>   Take the incoming INSERT statements and proxy them to the Oracle
>   database.  A variation on DBD::Proxy might do a bunch of what you
>   want.

You might also find the stuff at http://sqlfairy.sf.net/ useful.

-Dom

-- 
| Semantico: creators of major online resources  |
|   URL: http://www.semantico.com/   |
|   Tel: +44 (1273) 72   |
|   Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |

Re: Treating strings like file handles?

[Chris Andrews]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 08:57:20PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> 
> Because you were blinded by the orange?
> 
> http://search.cpan.org/orange.html

Behold, interweb sunglasses:

  ExtFilterDefine orangenomore mode=output intype=text/css \
  cmd="/bin/sed s/ff7300/006699/g"

  ProxyRequests On
  
SetOutputFilter orangenomore
...
  


Bwahahaha!

Re: Treating strings like file handles?

[Nicholas Clark]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 03:44:13PM +0100, Ali Young wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Richard Clamp wrote:

> > http://search.cpan.org/author/ERYQ/IO-stringy-2.108/lib/IO/Scalar.pm
> > 
> 
> Perfect, thanks. Now how on earth did I miss seeing that on CPAN?

Because you were blinded by the orange?

http://search.cpan.org/orange.html

Nicholas Clark

Re: Treating strings like file handles?

[Nicholas Clark]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 11:47:15AM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote:

> [1] Yay!  5.8.1-RC1 is out!

closely followed by RC2 - see:

http://search.cpan.org/author/JHI/

RC3 won't be out until after YAPC::EU, as currently Jarkko is in Scotland,
and then goes to Paris via London.

Which reminds me - do we want to meet up with Jarkko on Saturday or
Sunday? Plenty of opportunity to say "thank you" in person for his
ongoing hard work over the past few years.

Nicholas Clark

Re: Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure

[Steven Arnott]

Website lists the event as being sold out for London,
however he is doing a month long run in Edinburgh Festival Fringe,
and UK tour afterwards... And I expect it on TV in Spring 2004...

On Tuesday 15 Jul 2003 4:20 am, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> As a pre-YAPC bit of fun, you're invited to join me and others for some
> stand-up docu-comedy about how Googlewhacking took Dave Gorman around
> the world. Yes, this is Dave Gorman of "Are you Dave Gorman?" fame.
>
> http://www.davegorman.com/dggwa.html
>
> Details: 21st July 2003, starts 8pm, meet at the pub across the road 7pm.
> Riverside Studios nr Hammersmith tube. 10quid each, 6 for 5 deal so if
> enough people come it'll be only 8quid each.
> http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=523188&Y=178127&A=Y&Z=1
>
> (Mail me offlist before Friday 15:00 BST and I'll grab tickets en
> masse.)
>
> Cheers,
> Paul

--
Steven Arnott
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Expletives (was Eurocracy sucks)

[Earle Martin]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:07:48AM +0100, Paul Mison wrote:
> Personally I gave up on work subscriptions to lists after a rather
> unpleasant morning moving all my mailing lists when a company went 
> bust...

In my case, it was back in 1999, when my boss at the time (a real queen bee
type from the Margaret Thatcher School of Hairstyles and Social Skills) asked
me "Who is this Subgenius person? He sends an awful lot of mail." It seems that
when she had nothing to do, she would go up to the company mailserver, next
to her office (it was a small company) and watch the log scrolling past on the
monitor to see what people were sending mail about. And thus had noticed list
traffic on the Lyst[0] to and from my account.

Over the course of the next half hour I changed all my mailing list
subscriptions to my shell account, where they've been ever since.

[0] http://lyst.org/lyst.html



-- 
# Earle Martin http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EarleMartin
$a="f695a9a2176a7dd1618af6649896ee10f05ea986de18af6277e9a1d8ef4696644569a1d".
"8ef46961ae1e64277e9896eea7d92ea8003e9a1d8ef4696f6950";$b="8ALB6AIA4.BA2";$c=
join"",unpack"C*",$b;$c=~s/7/2/g;@b=split"",$c;foreach$d(@b){$e=hex(substr($a
,$f,$d));while(length($e)<8){substr($e,0,0)=0;}print pack"b8",$e;$f+=$d;}

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[darren chamberlain]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

* Darren Chamberlain  [2003-07-15 11:34]:
> * Dave Cross  [2003-07-15 08:37]:
> > So what we're looking for is an application that can sit between the
> > VB app and the Oracle database, translating the ODBC/SQL Server calls
> > to Oracle API calls. It needs to look like an SQL Server to the VB app
> > and then actually put the data into Oracle.
> 
> It might be interesting to write a small ODBC listener that can respond
> to ODBC calls and Do Stuff with the strings that come in.

Er, I just realized that was only half of a thought.  The rest looks
something like:

  Take the incoming INSERT statements and proxy them to the Oracle
  database.  A variation on DBD::Proxy might do a bunch of what you
  want.

(darren)

- -- 
History doesn't always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells 'can't
you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.
-- John W. Campbell Jr.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: This message is digitally signed and can be verified for authenticity.

iD8DBQE/FCBfzsinjrVhZaoRAqaNAJ9DGZIEh809MhICP0BrEAsKe7T+rwCghy3S
0R202fu5Wf4jR8hmh2A87DE=
=N2zo
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[darren chamberlain]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

* Dave Cross  [2003-07-15 08:37]:
> So what we're looking for is an application that can sit between the
> VB app and the Oracle database, translating the ODBC/SQL Server calls
> to Oracle API calls. It needs to look like an SQL Server to the VB app
> and then actually put the data into Oracle.

It might be interesting to write a small ODBC listener that can respond
to ODBC calls and Do Stuff with the strings that come in.
http://search.cpan.org/dist/UnixODBC/ seems to contain a bunch of useful
information about the ODBC interface, and might be a good place to
start.

(darren)

- -- 
Lackland's Laws:
  (1) Never be first.
  (2) Never be last.
  (3) Never volunteer for anything
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: This message is digitally signed and can be verified for authenticity.

iD8DBQE/FB38zsinjrVhZaoRAgTZAKCIb5RhxrEm6YQOczwVVUQeGmeXYACfeHyc
5gKuG65eLGB2SKJo7xiHfss=
=itsh
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Hanging out in london after YAPC::EU

[Claes Jacobsson]

Hi,

after YAPC::EU next week I've planned to hang out in London for a while 
and drink beer with you guys.

However, since my budget is kinda limited I would appreciate if someone 
would be kind to have a spare sofa I could crash on for a couple of 
nights.

"Mi casa es su casa",

See you in Paris,

/Claes

Stockoholm Perl Mongers

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[Dave Cross]

From: Patrick Mulvany <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 7/15/03 2:36:02 PM

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:57:55AM -0700, Dave Cross 
> wrote:
>> 
>> A client of mine is thinking of buying a datafeed from a 
>> third party supplier.
>> 
>> As part of the way that this feed works, there is an 
>> application that writes the data into a database. This 
>> app is written in VB and assumes that the database it is 
>> writing to is MS SQL Server.
>
> This would not be from a well known car data provider 
> would it?

No it's financial information. Share prices, that kind of thing.

Dave...

-- 


"Let me see you make decisions, without your television"
   - Depeche Mode (Stripped)

Re: License question

[Shevek]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Alex Hudson wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:18:50PM +0100, Nigel Wetters wrote:
> > I could dispense with the database if I created a second (non-distributed)
> > program that used the database to build the distributed program. Does the
> > distributed program still need to carry the liceses for the original data??
> 
> I don't understand what you're suggesting here - are you saying that by
> writing a second program which produces the first, you somehow get around
> the copyright of the data? Unlikely.

The programs as distributed are then free. Any data they generate using 
third party sources might not be. This is valid. A distribution of the 
generated data is not free.

S.

-- 
Shevekhttp://www.anarres.org/
I am the Borg. http://www.gothnicity.org/

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[Patrick Mulvany]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:57:55AM -0700, Dave Cross wrote:
> 
> A client of mine is thinking of buying a datafeed from a third
> party supplier.
> 
> As part of the way that this feed works, there is an application
> that writes the data into a database. This app is written in
> VB and assumes that the database it is writing to is MS SQL Server.

This would not be from a well known car data provider would it?

Just curious

Paddy 

Re: Database Connection Conversions

[Patrick Mulvany]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:57:55AM -0700, Dave Cross wrote:
> A client of mine is thinking of buying a datafeed from a third
> party supplier.

> As part of the way that this feed works, there is an application
> that writes the data into a database. This app is written in
> VB and assumes that the database it is writing to is MS SQL Server.

Does it actually assume it is a SQL Server and check or is it just 
connecting to a named connection?

> Now we don't like MS SQL Server. We don't want to have to buy
> a license for it when we have a perfectly good Oracle database
> running on Solaris.

A nice sane attitude.. any one for SQL Slammer?

> So what we're looking for is an application that can sit between
> the VB app and the Oracle database, translating the ODBC/SQL
> Server calls to Oracle API calls. It needs to look like an SQL
> Server to the VB app and then actually put the data into Oracle.

With out more information and trying things it would be very hard to 
judge but if it is just using a named connection try creating that 
pointing at the oracle server with the same tables. This may well work 
but I will give the following provisios.

A. Tables and fields have sane names ie ANSII SQL compliant 
B. No stored procedures have been created or used on the SQL Server
C. The client isn't expecting the server to return a select from a stored
 procedure (Oracle can only do this as a rset and not directly)

If this fail the next suggestion is to try Sybase. SQL Server have diverged
from its original Sybase origins a lot but quite often even now you can switch
between the two with less work than moving to Oracle.

Hope this helps

Paddy

[JOB] Perl, MySQL in Acton

[Nicholas Clark]

I don't think that anyone's punted this one to the list yet:

  http://jobs.perl.org/job/851

Summary:

Software Developer (Back-end Systems) Perl, MySQL Linux

Either £32-£38 Neg (on their website) or £28-£35 Neg (jobs.perl.org)

Start up online mail order DVD business, North Acton

There's also a 6 week contract with them at http://jobs.perl.org/job/852

Nicholas Clark

Re: License question

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:18:50PM +0100, Nigel Wetters wrote:
> I could dispense with the database if I created a second (non-distributed)
> program that used the database to build the distributed program. Does the
> distributed program still need to carry the liceses for the original data??

I don't understand what you're suggesting here - are you saying that by
writing a second program which produces the first, you somehow get around
the copyright of the data? Unlikely.

'Specially in the UK, we have the concept of the copyright of a database. 

I would take a look at the Unicode and GNU miscutils discussion I pointed
you at; it sounds like that might be a solution, but you probably need to
check with an actual lawyer. debian-legal is again the place to raise
this.

Cheers,

Alex.

Re: License question

[Nigel Wetters]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jason Clifford wrote:

> I can only assume that the data includes personal identifying data 
> such as email addresses if it can be used in such a manner.

No. The original data source contains these identifiers. I am bundling data that has 
been stripped of all identifers, but it is still derived from the data that has been 
released under the restrictive license.

> Why not simply remove the data altogether and release the application with 
> notes on how to build the required data.

Ah. I probably need to explain a bit more. Here is the link to the module in question 
(note the licenses at the bottom):
http://search.cpan.org/author/NWETTERS/IP-Country-2.14/lib/IP/Authority.pm

The module's purpose is to identify the regional Internet registry where an IP address 
was registered. The only people who need this are writing an interface to the whois 
system. My module allows them to reduce the amount of calls they make to the whois 
servers.

I cannot imagine how the remaining data could be used for spamming, but the license 
still is incompatible with debian.

There are instructions within the CPAN distribution about how to build the database 
that is used by the module, but it involves a 300MB download and a 1-hour parse of the 
data (taking 600MB of RAM). The usefulness of my module is that this work has already 
been done.

I could dispense with the database if I created a second (non-distributed) program 
that used the database to build the distributed program. Does the distributed program 
still need to carry the liceses for the original data??

--nwetters

AxKit pal wanted

[Alex McLintock]

Hi folks,

I'm using Apache Cocoon for producing a java/ xml website.

I was wondering about converting it to AxKit and was wondering if any cool 
London.pm person would be interested in helping me out.

It is semi-professional. I got paid for this website in the past - but am 
updating it for free.

Cheers

Alex

Re: XML::DOM trouble

[Matthew Lawrence]

Robin Berjon wrote:

Matt Lawrence wrote:

XML::DOM is acting very strangely with regard to UTF-8.


I wouldn't be surprised if XML::DOM and Perl 5.8 interacted badly. You 
would probably be better off using XML::LibXML instead.
It's a bit too late for that now, unfortunately. I'm pretty much stuck 
with XML::DOM.

I just found an old copy of perl 5.6.0 on the machine, which works a lot 
better. :-)

The irony is the reason I updgraded to 5.8.0 in the first place was to 
resolve a UTF-8 bug in 5.6.

Ho hum. I guess I get the lesser of two evils.

Matt

Re: Eurocracy sucks.

[Earle Martin]

Bonjour [EMAIL PROTECTED],

You wrote:
> But i think , BTW , that among the ideas you were given , the first one
> (going to the embassy first thing in the morning and be prepared to spend
> the whole day there) has really good chances to succeed . 

To check this out, I went to the embassy on my way home from work last
night... it was closed, but I did see a number of large signs saying "IT IS
COMPULSORY TO BOOK AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE TELEPHONE BOOKING LINE", or some
such. Thanks for the thought, though.

> > Well, I'm aiming to meet some interesting mongueurs and convince them into
> > starting an OpenGuides Paris
> I already thought about that , and started to gather some material ... I'll
> let you know but at the moment i have a few things to manage till the 23rd , 
> and it will carry on till the 25th ;-) ...
> 
> Afterwards , i 'll have some time to get back at this ... :)

Tres bien! I'll look forwards to saying hi.

Amities,

Earle.

-- 
# Earle Martin http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EarleMartin
$a="f695a9a2176a7dd1618af6649896ee10f05ea986de18af6277e9a1d8ef4696644569a1d".
"8ef46961ae1e64277e9896eea7d92ea8003e9a1d8ef4696f6950";$b="8ALB6AIA4.BA2";$c=
join"",unpack"C*",$b;$c=~s/7/2/g;@b=split"",$c;foreach$d(@b){$e=hex(substr($a
,$f,$d));while(length($e)<8){substr($e,0,0)=0;}print pack"b8",$e;$f+=$d;}

Re: License question

[Jason Clifford]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nigel Wetters wrote:

> I guess some of you have thought about licensing issues, so might be able to help me.
> 
> I have some code that can't be included in the Debian project because 
> it doesn't work without some bundled data. The bundled data is free (as 
> in beer), but has a non-Debian-compliant license (it cannot be used to 
> spam people).

I can only assume that the data includes personal identifying data such as 
email addresses if it can be used in such a manner.

Why not simply remove the data altogether and release the application with 
notes on how to build the required data.

Then the application can stand on it's own.

So long as it does not depend upon the specific data you provide that 
should work and you could still include details in the readme file of the 
data you have available and where it can be obtained.

I would comment however that if you are publishing such identifying data 
you probably require the explicit consent of those identified in it.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG   Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/   ADSL Broadband available now

Re: License question

[Sam Vilain]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 09:59, Nigel Wetters wrote:
> I have some code that can't be included in the Debian project because it
> doesn't work without some bundled data. The bundled data is free (as in
> beer), but has a non-Debian-compliant license (it cannot be used to spam
> people).

Oh, excellent, so it has all of the drawbacks with none of the
advantages of an open source license then!

Does anyone *really* think that putting a clause against using a piece
of software to spam in the license will work?
-- 
Sam Vilain, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
 -- Mahatma Gandhi

Re: License question

[the hatter]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nigel Wetters wrote:

> I can avoid bundling the data by having a second program that does know
> about the data write the program I wish to distribute. A bit tortuous,
> but if it avoids the licensing clash, probably worth the effort. But
> does it avoid the licensing clash?

Maybe add a -datafile option that allows you to specify the files location
(and include in --help a URL for where to the the free-as-in-beer one)


the hatter

Re: License question

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 09:59:52AM +0100, Nigel Wetters wrote:
> I have some code that can't be included in the Debian project because
> it doesn't work without some bundled data. The bundled data is free (as 
> in beer), but has a non-Debian-compliant license (it cannot be used to
> spam people).

It does sound non-free, I'm afraid - if the data is an integral part of
the program, then it makes the program non-free. But, it would very much
depend on the interaction between the program and the data.

If it's impossible to use the program without the data, then my instinct
says it's non-free (it's not just non-DFSG-free, but sounds like non-FSF-
free and non-OSI-open too). The only option open to you would be to replace
the non-free data with free data - this happens on a fairly frequent basis.
Look up the recent debian-legal discussion on Unicode tables.

Cheers,

Alex.

Re: [OT] Dynamic image viewers

[Robin Berjon]

Paul Makepeace wrote:
On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 08:22:31PM +0200, Robin Berjon wrote:
Bah. Bh. Flash evil. Flash bad. Must die. Baaah.
Ah yes, without Flash a whole bunch of fun things wouldn't be possible,
http://www.anycities.com/user/volkomen/iconwars.html
Yes, that's fun indeed, but it could be both fun and not proprietary :)

--
Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Research Engineer, Expwayhttp://expway.fr/
7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE  8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488

Re: XML::DOM trouble

[Robin Berjon]

Matt Lawrence wrote:
XML::DOM is acting very strangely with regard to UTF-8.
I wouldn't be surprised if XML::DOM and Perl 5.8 interacted badly. You would 
probably be better off using XML::LibXML instead.

--
Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Research Engineer, Expwayhttp://expway.fr/
7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE  8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488

License question

[Nigel Wetters]

I guess some of you have thought about licensing issues, so might be able to help me.

I have some code that can't be included in the Debian project because it doesn't work 
without some bundled data. The bundled data is free (as in beer), but has a 
non-Debian-compliant license (it cannot be used to spam people).

I can avoid bundling the data by having a second program that does know about the data 
write the program I wish to distribute. A bit tortuous, but if it avoids the licensing 
clash, probably worth the effort. But does it avoid the licensing clash?

--nwetters

Re: london.pm digest, Vol 1 #1485 - 18 msgs

[David Hodgkinson]

On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 07:46  am, Ivor Williams wrote:

- Original Message -
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 16:46:11 +0100
Subject: Re: OT: More sybase related - IDENTIFIER TOO LONG
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: David Hodgkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Monday, July 7, 2003, at 03:41 PM, Raf wrote:
Seems like a bit of poor error handling/reporting on the part of 
sybase
though.

Get the SAMS Sybase Unleashed book.

Oh, and then read it.

Any chance of the ISBN? I would very much like to buy a copy for 
myself for work,
but I can't find it on Amazo
On import, by the looks of it:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672309092/

But! I swear I saw it on the shelves at the Books etc. on London Wall 
last week.

Books

[MARTELETTI-MAZU]

Simon Wistow 
 
 
If you still have:
Think Pascal [0] User ManualThink Pascal Object Orientated 
Programming Manual
send me a message. Thank you.

Re: Expletives (was Eurocracy sucks)

[Richard Clamp]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 11:18:27AM +0200, Mark Overmeer wrote:
> You probably mean
> 
>  grep -c 'f.ck' london.pm.mbox

You trim too much.

>> Obviously they weren't starred in the grep query. That would be 
>> silly.)

-- 
Richard Clamp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: Expletives (was Eurocracy sucks)

[Mark Overmeer]

* Paul Mison ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [030715 11:10]:
> On 15/07/2003 at 01:03 +0100, Ivor Williams wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ grep 'f*ck' london.pm.mbox | wc -l
>  216


   > echo "cannot unlock my door" | grep 'f*ck' london.pm.mbox | wc -l

   1

You probably mean

 grep -c 'f.ck' london.pm.mbox
-- 
   MarkOv


drs Mark A.C.J. OvermeerMARKOV Solutions
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://Mark.Overmeer.net   http://solutions.overmeer.net

Re: Expletives (was Eurocracy sucks)

[Roger Burton West]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:07:48AM +0100, Paul Mison wrote:

>Perhaps that's a good idea. Either that, or collect it via a method 
>other than your employee's servers. Personally I gave up on work 
>subscriptions to lists after a rather unpleasant morning moving all 
>my mailing lists when a company went bust, and all lists go to my 
>personal addresses (and are collected at work over SSL-enabled POP, 
>although I've also used SSH tunnels).

A simple test: Do you read this list because of your job? Are you likely
to want to keep reading it at your next job?

Roger

Re: Expletives (was Eurocracy sucks)

[Paul Mison]

On 15/07/2003 at 01:03 +0100, Ivor Williams wrote:

Interestingly enough,  this message, and at least four of the replies
to it have tripped the corporate dodgy word detector on-site where I
am working (lurking). Whilst I fully concur with Earle's sentiments
about the attitude of the French authorities towards his wife, I am
wondering whether to unsubscribe from this list at work.
Perhaps that's a good idea. Either that, or collect it via a method 
other than your employee's servers. Personally I gave up on work 
subscriptions to lists after a rather unpleasant morning moving all 
my mailing lists when a company went bust, and all lists go to my 
personal addresses (and are collected at work over SSL-enabled POP, 
although I've also used SSH tunnels).

I thought that this list was more or less work-safe and clean, now I
am not so sure.
Really? (Swearwords starred to protect the mail-filtered, hopefully. 
Obviously they weren't starred in the grep query. That would be 
silly.)

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ grep 'f*ck' london.pm.mbox | wc -l
216
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ grep 'c*nt' london.pm.mbox | wc -l
12
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ grep 'sh*t' london.pm.mbox | wc -l
293
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ grep 'cr*p' london.pm.mbox | wc -l
466
That's over the entire two-year history in the current pipermail 
archival mbox. So it's not too bad (that's, what, two severe 
swear-words a week, and of course I didn't do anything to remove 
quoted words), but it's not exactly angelic either.

One of the list admins certainly has no problem swearing (quite 
possibly Not Safe For Work):

http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20020218/010195.html

--
:: paul
:: compiles with canadian cs1471 protocol

Re: ICE

[Robin Berjon]

Simon Wilcox wrote:
No not the stuff you put in drinks (sadly) but the [1] Information and
Content Exchange protocol :-/
Has anyone worked with this and have any tips/gotchas to share ?
I haven't heard about ICE for ages, but that may mean nothing. There's a fair 
amount of information from Robin Cover, so you may want to dig through:

  http://xml.coverpages.org/ice.html

--
Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Research Engineer, Expwayhttp://expway.fr/
7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE  8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488

Database Connection Conversions

[Dave Cross]

A client of mine is thinking of buying a datafeed from a third
party supplier.

As part of the way that this feed works, there is an application
that writes the data into a database. This app is written in
VB and assumes that the database it is writing to is MS SQL Server.

Now we don't like MS SQL Server. We don't want to have to buy
a license for it when we have a perfectly good Oracle database
running on Solaris.

So what we're looking for is an application that can sit between
the VB app and the Oracle database, translating the ODBC/SQL
Server calls to Oracle API calls. It needs to look like an SQL
Server to the VB app and then actually put the data into Oracle.

Anyone know of anything that does this?

Dave...

-- 


"Let me see you make decisions, without your television"
   - Depeche Mode (Stripped)

Re: london.pm digest, Vol 1 #1485 - 18 msgs

[Dave Cross]

From: "Ivor Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 7/15/03 6:46:37 AM

[ SAMS Sybase Unleashed book ]

> Any chance of the ISBN? I would very much like to buy a 
> copy for myself for work, but I can't find it on Amazon or

> samspublishing.com. Is the book still in print?

The ISBN is 0672309092, but note that that Sybase publishing
industry is pretty much dead and this edition (which is still
the most recent) was published in 1996. The amazon.co.uk page
says "Availability: usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks. Please
note that titles occasionally go out of print or publishers run
out of stock."

So it looks like it might be hard to get.

Dave...

-- 


"Let me see you make decisions, without your television"
   - Depeche Mode (Stripped)